"How ChatGPT Can Turn Anyone Into a Ransomware and Malware Threat Actor"

Since OpenAI's launch of ChatGPT, commentators have expressed concern about the impact Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven content creation will have on cybersecurity. Many researchers are concerned that generative AI solutions will make cybercrime more accessible. For example, without any technical or coding knowledge, any user can enter a query to generate malicious code and convincing phishing emails using ChatGPT. Security teams can use ChatGPT for defensive purposes such as code testing. However, the solution has significantly complicated the threat landscape by lowering the entry barrier for cyberattacks. The central challenge created by OpenAI's creation from a cybersecurity standpoint is that anyone, regardless of technical expertise, can create code to generate malware and ransomware on-demand. While ChatGPT can be used to help developers write good code, it can also and has already been used for malicious purposes, according to Matt Psencik, Director and Endpoint Security Specialist at Tanium. Psencik has already seen the bot be asked to assist in reverse engineering code to find zero-day exploits that could be used maliciously. ChatGPT has built-in safeguards to prevent the system from being used for illegal activity. For example, it will refuse to generate shellcode or provide specific instructions on how to generate shellcode or establish a reverse shell, and it will flag malicious keywords such as phishing in order to block the requests. The difficulty with these measures is that they rely on the AI identifying that the user is attempting to create malicious code, which users might obfuscate by rephrasing searches. In addition, there is no immediate penalty for breaching OpenAI's content policy. Security researchers have already started to test ChatGPT's potential to write malicious code. For instance, security researcher and co-founder of Picus Security, Dr. Suleyman Ozarslan, recently used ChatGPT to launch a phishing campaign and create ransomware for MacOS. This article continues to discuss how ChatGPT and other AI-driven content-creation platforms could impact cybercrime and cybersecurity.

VB reports "How ChatGPT Can Turn Anyone Into a Ransomware and Malware Threat Actor"